


Home for the Holidays

by Blake



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:20:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21944998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake/pseuds/Blake
Summary: Napoleon, Gaby, and Illya make a gingerbread house.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31
Collections: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Winter Holiday Gift Exchange 2019





	Home for the Holidays

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roadhymns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roadhymns/gifts).



“I hope you understand this is only by special request. I don’t do this often.” Napoleon lets go of the rolling pin just to reach up and dab the tip of Gaby’s nose with what she suspects is flour. He smiles in self-satisfaction (Napoleon has no other smile) and turns back to the dark brown cookie dough. Gaby rolls her eyes, but lets it happen. As long as she gets the gingerbread house she was promised, she doesn’t mind having a nose covered in flour.

“What, cooking?” Illya asks incredulously, wetting his thumb and wiping off Gaby’s nose, which scrunches up under his attention. Having cold spit on her nose is quite possibly worse than flour. 

Gaby spins away from them and toward Napoleon’s liquor cabinet. “ _It’s not cooking; it’s baking_ ,” she recites, just to keep from having to yet again hear Napoleon explain why it’s such an extremely magnanimous favor he’s doing for her.

Napoleon keeps on rolling the dough into a flat circle, spreading it thinner and thinner, pausing only to nod in agreement when Gaby holds up his nicest bottle of brandy. “A one-time deal, in exchange for the time last week when Gaby so generously eliminated that guard who had a gun to my head.”

Gaby pours two hefty glasses of brandy, watching out of the corner of her eye as Illya attempts to steal bits of dough off the edge of the circle only to be thwarted by a slap on the wrist. Scowling and rubbing his flour-dusted wrist with his other hand, Illya looks like an overgrown eight-year-old. “I saved you from that sinking ship three weeks ago. Why don’t you bake this for me?”

“She asked nicely.” An amused silence slithers around the room, all three of them privately aware that Illya is incapable of asking Napoleon nicely for anything. Gaby has watched Illya’s edges soften around Napoleon, watched him tenderly soak bandages for his wounds, watched him hand-carve a wooden birdhouse to hang outside Napoleon’s apartment for a Christmas gift, but she has never, not once, seen him ask Napoleon nicely for something. “Why, thank you, Gaby,” Napoleon says, voice musical and delighted when she sets down his glass near his right hand. Gaby stands on her toes to kiss Napoleon’s cheek in response and then turns to Illya, who she knows gets attention-starved in a matter of moments. She has to pull his head down low enough to kiss his cheek, because she doesn’t stand a chance reaching him barefoot, but he goes down willingly.

~~~

“This is exactly what I wanted,” Gaby says, pushing a red gumdrop into the thick white icing along the roof.

Illya clears his throat and removes it before placing it just an inch to the right, sticking to some strict color scheme that Gaby can’t be bothered to figure out. “Traditional German Christmas activity?” he asks, clearly still half-jealous that Gaby asked Napoleon or that Napoleon honored her wish or both.

Gaby opens her mouth to answer, but before she can, Napoleon snips his scissors across the tip of a new icing bag and says, “I must say, I _am_ honored that you trusted me with recreating your childhood memories.”

“Hm,” Gaby huffs, pushing another red gumdrop into the same spot Illya removed hers from moments ago. “More like I wanted to see the full American bastardization of them. To see just how ugly it can be.” She pops a green gumdrop into her mouth, chewing until her teeth threaten to fall out. Illya laughs while moving her red gumdrop yet again.

Napoleon neatly pipes a straight line of white icing across the top of the roof. “Oh, that’s a shame. I could have done a much better job, if I’d known your intentions. I grew up in the Midwest, you know. I can do garish.”

“I have been telling you that for months,” Illya comments, smiling and obviously feeling a little better.

Gaby hums along to the Christmas songs on the radio, missing notes here and there because she’s still learning all these new capitalist songs they never played behind the Wall. Her gumdrop chaos is persistent enough that Illya eventually abandons his project, turning instead to the cut-out cookies and little jars of colored icing Napoleon prepared. Mission accomplished, she sits back and watches, sipping her brandy and counting the blond hairs that have fallen forward to brush Illya’s forehead as he’s bent in concentration. There’s a clump of white icing attached to one of them. When she leans forward to pull the sticky stuff out, Illya doesn’t flinch at her touch, and she feels smug with victory.

A few minutes later, Illya stops moving and suddenly looks like he’s holding back from saying something. “Yes, Illya?” Napoleon asks, just as attuned as she is to Illya’s social awkwardness. 

Gaby reaches out to brush her thumb across Illya’s icing-sticky hand, encouraging him. He looks each of them in the eye, considering, before making his decision and lowering his eyes to the table. Without another word, he brings out the cookies he has been decorating, placing them delicately at the front of the house. There are three of them: one gingerbread lady painted in a yellow icing dress and red hair and two gingerbread men, one covered in cool blue except for yellow hair and one in green with what looks like a blue tie. It’s a crude rendition, but it’s clear. It’s a cookie version of the three of them, the cookie family to live in their beautiful gingerbread house with its delicate icing and ugly gumdrop accents.

Illya still won’t look at them, clearly embarrassed by his own earnestness. Gaby and Napoleon exchange a fond smile. “They’re perfect,” Gaby says, while Napoleon turns away to break the legs off one of the remaining undecorated gingerbread men.

“Almost.” Napoleon pipes icing along the top edges of the broken legs and then pushes them to the bottom of cookie-Illya’s feet, rendering him disproportionately taller than the other two characters. “There, that’s better.”


End file.
